Berlusconi also defended Mussolini for allying himself with Hitler, saying his likely reasoning was that it would be better to be on the winning side.

The media mogul, whose conservative forces are polling second in voter surveys ahead of next month’s election, spoke to reporters on the sidelines of a ceremony in Milan to commemorate the Holocaust.

In 1938, before the outbreak of the Second World War, Mussolini’s regime passed the so-called “racial laws,” barring Jews from Italy’s universities and many professions, among other bans.

When Germany’s Nazi regime occupied Italy during the war, thousands from the tiny Italian Jewish community were deported to death camps.

“It is difficult now to put oneself in the shoes of who was making decisions back then,” Berlusconi said of Mussolini’s support for Hitler.

“Certainly the government then, fearing that German power would turn into a general victory, preferred to be allied with Hitler’s Germany rather than oppose it.”

Berlusconi added that “within this alliance came the imposition of the fight against, and extermination of, the Jews. Thus, the racial laws are the worst fault of Mussolini, who, in so many other aspects, did good.”

Reactions of outrage, along with a demand that Berlusconi be prosecuted for promoting Fascism, quickly followed his words.

Berlusconi’s praise of Mussolini constitutes “an insult to the democratic conscience of Italy,” said Rosy Bindi, a centre-left leader.

“Only Berlusconi’s political cynicism, combined with the worst historic revisionism, could separate the shame of the racist laws from the Fascist dictatorship.”

Italian laws enacted following the country’s disastrous experience in the war forbid the encouragement of Fascism.

A candidate for local elections, Gianfranco Mascia, pledged that he and his supporters will present a formal complaint tomorrow to Italian prosecutors, seeking to have Berlusconi prosecuted.

Advocating aggressive nationalism, Mussolini used brutish force and populist appeal evoking ancient Rome’s glories to achieve and keep his dictatorial grip on power, starting in the early 1920s and lasting well into the Second World War.

His Fascist “blackshirt” loyalists cracked down on dissidents, through beatings and jailings.

He encouraged big families to propagate the Italian population, established a sprawling state economy and erected monumental buildings and statues to evoke ancient Rome.

Mussolini sought to impose order on a generally individualistic-minded people, and Italians sometimes note trains ran on time during Fascism.

Eventually, Italian military failures in Africa and in Greece fostered rebellion among Fascist officials, and in 1943 he was placed under arrest by orders of the Italian king. His end came at the vengeful hands of partisan fighters who shot him and his mistress, and left their bodies to hang in a Milan square in April 1945.